Words and Buzz

Companies of all sorts have started deploying Beacons that (at a minimum) tell a smartphone precisely where it is so that an app can act on the specific location. Its uses far surpass the one that has grabbed most of the media attention: tracking shoppers to provide tailored sales pitches and coupons at specific locations of stores.
Numerous implementations have been advertised in the last year, with the US leading the way in beacon integration. Marketing and loyalty drive the most common purposes at the moment, with some examples:
Macy’s is rolling out beacons across their stores in the US, for in-store marketing and loyalty.
Major League Baseball are using beacons in their ballparks to offer fans the ability to check in, know where venders are and get additional content on their phones.
San Francisco airport is using beacons to help

Have you heard about beacons?
Beacon technology is based on the action of sending data between a transmitter and a smartphone or tablet with an installed app that enables receiving signals.
Beacons can be compared to lighthouses, but instead of sending light they send radio waves to all applicable receivers nearby. They are small computers charged by a coin battery, equipped with an accelerometer and a temperature sensor. When users walk next to a beacon device, their smartphones get notifications personalized by the beacon’s owner. This system allows sending only small data pieces and has some limits (eg. you can’t transfer music or video material). Because beacons can recognize their proximity to nearby devices, they can adjust messages to the location of signal receiver.
What opportunities do beacons give you?
Beacons can be comprehensively used. But the most popular way that people use beacons

A Beacon is a small gadget that consistently sends out radio signals to any nearby tablets and/or smartphones, containing a small amount of data using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). The signal strength and time between each signal can be set up to give a desired coverage. Mobile apps can listen for the signals being broadcast and, wen they hear a relevant signal, can trigger an action on your phone. Note that Beacons only work or communicate in one direction (they broadcast data but cannot read things from off your phone).
For the majority of current Beacons, the data that they broadcast is hard coded and doesn’t change frequently (which means when configuring the Beacon it’s set only once). Beacons rely on the device which is listening to do something intelligent with the data – this is likely to start changing in

It is unnerving to hear, “My company gets business from referrals, not our website. I don’t care about online branding or online marketing.”
It’s a shame that some business owners and executives do not understand the effect online branding has on their company’s bottom line, especially when it comes to referrals and prospective clients.
Online branding is about far more than your company’s website or your company’s social media presence. Your online brand includes what your employees and most of all, your company’s “experts” say online. It also includes things that you cannot control, such as online reviews.
While professional service companies are not as vulnerable as consumer product based companies to the inconsistency of online reviews, you still can’t discount the effects websites like Yelp have on recruiting and business development efforts.
Today, most people turn to the web for research, regardless of

We recently launched an updated site for Animal Playground!
Animal Playground is a Doggie Daycare, grooming and boarding facility located in Davenport, Iowa. Owner Bob Burns and the rest of his team have over 20 years of experience and are dedicated to treating your pet like family, and providing quality services at an affordable price.
Animal Playground was ready for an upgrade to their existing site, which we also built. The new site focused on a new, modern design and mobile compatibility. You can now watch your pet anytime from anywhere with their live video stream available right on the web site.
Visit Animal Playground's new website! http://www.animalplaygroundqc.com

We’re delighted to announce that our new and refreshed website is live!
The updated site includes changes to navigation and increasing the visibility of our services. We’ve also improved the structure of our content, so you’ll get more from a quick read. There’s a whole host of smaller, but impactful changes, aiming to create a user-friendly browsing experience for our trusted and valued customers, business partners and prospective clients.
Amongst the new features the site contains integrated social media buttons for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc, to foster improved communication with the clients. We will be constantly updating our content with helpful information, articles, blogs, newsletters, company announcements and client successes in the News section.
We invite you to view our fresh, new website. We hope you like the changes, and if you have any feedback, please let us know on Facebook or Twitter!

The lights are turned off and the door is locked.
When I visit a site that hasn’t been updated in a year (or more), that’s what I assume. Or I make leaps that are possibly even more damning, pegging the person as not caring, unprofessional, or someone who starts things and doesn’t finish them. This is not the person you want to be, because it will win you few fans and even fewer return visitors to your web site.
You are probably thinking to yourself, but I did everything right. I got a professional company to design a great looking website and did some SEO work to help make sure I had the right focus and content. But it just isn’t producing like I expected.
The problem is a common one. I call it the “build it and leave it” disorder. You work

We recently launched a new site for North Central Training & Development!
North Central Training & Development helps turn your management team into leaders. Each class is designed to enhance their knowledge and skills in order to meet the demands of your business.
North Central Training & Development came to us with the need of a web site to list the up-coming classes offered. With content written by QC Total Tech, our team created a design that included a place to showcase the upcoming classes, and also the ability to register and pay online. The new site is captivating, engaging and compatible with all mobile devices.
Check out North Central Training & Development by visiting: http://www.northcen.com

SEO is a lot more than sprinkling a few keywords throughout your text. Google will certainly not appreciate it very much. Not only will you fail to get your site ranked highly by it, but you also risk getting penalized. You have to be ready to put in more effort and be more subtle when implementing keywords. The type of writing done for a website is different than the formal writing required for academia. It's a little bit more restrictive than creative writing but only in the sense that you have to write with keyword optimization in mind.
Basically, keyword optimization is making sure your content contains enough examples of your keywords, which are words or phrases commonly used in search engines to find what your business offers. For example, if you're selling real estate in the Quad Cities, your keywords

Remember when you had to find a phone book and flip through hundreds of pages in order to find a local business? The use of Yellow Pages has declined drastically over the last five years. People now make quick searches on one of the many popular online directories or social media outlets. Since Internet search is the primary tool to finding businesses today, it’s crucial to make sure your business is listed on a relevant online directory like Google Places.
“Mobile Googling alone will exceed over 27 billion search queries by 2016 globally.” (Source: http://ctt.ec/01747+)
Google Places is a local business directory paired up with Google Search. It gives a business a landing page where it can describe its services, additional contact information, highlight products through photos and video, and also allows customers to leave reviews.
“75% of search engine users never scroll past